Windows 7 is the latest release of Microsoft Windows, a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, netbooks, tablet PCs, and media center PCs.

Get Updates Directly In Your Inbox

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

In Windows 7 it can get annoying seeing the ActionCenter icon pop up notifications every time you turn on your computer. Today we will look at changing the messages that it displays and even completely disabling it.

New in Windows 7 is the ActionCenter which is an activity center that allows you to control system notifications. This is definitely an improvement to previous versions so you can control the amount of annoying messages the OS pops up from the taskbar. To get to ActionCenter select it from Control Panel or simply type "action center" (no quotes) into the search box in the Start Menu.

By default the ActionCenter notification icon will be displayed in the taskbar and display messages about security and maintenance settings.

While in ActionCenter you can view which settings are enabled or not and change them by clicking the different hyperlinks.

Click on ChangeActionCenter settings to turn messages on or off.

If you are an experienced user and don't care to see the ActionCenter icon in the taskbar at all, here is how we disable it. Click on Start and go to Control Panel.

The Turn system icons on or off window will open and here you change ActionCenter to Off. Notice you can also turn other system icons on or off as well.

Also if you click on Customize notification icons in the screen above you can select the behavior of other tray notifications individually.

If you are new to computers or Windows 7 you might not want to disable the ActionCenter entirely until you get a better feel for it. With these tips you can definitely control the amount of notifications that pop up.